Hope Triumphant II: Sister

Chapter 3: Thick as Thieves

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17 October 2006
The Hotel Ilissos in Athens, Greece
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Amanda's stiletto heels clicked as she walked across the eight-pointed black star emblazoned in the white tile floor of the lobby of the Hotel Ilissos. In the plate-glass windows that revealed the busy traffic of Athens, she caught a glimpse of her reflection floating ghostlike over the cars: short, black skirt above long, trim legs, a sleeveless white sweater that showed off her tan—and her bust. Her reddish-blonde curls framed her face and just touched her shoulders. Not too shabby.

She paused at the doorway of the hotel bar, giving herself time to look over everyone in the bar—and giving everyone in the bar time to look at her. The three businessmen in suits and ties sitting on the low couches near the windows broke off their conversation to look and admire. The two handsome ones were French, probably, or Italian. English and German wouldn't be so appreciative, and they never dressed that well. The third simply had to be an American, a pudgy fellow in a badly-cut brown suit. The couple holding hands in the booth to her right stopped talking, too. Honeymooners, no doubt. The cute black-haired bartender nodded and smiled, but the woman seated at the bar didn't even turn around.

Amanda proceeded down the length of the narrow room, giving the businessmen a sweeping glance from under her lashes and bestowing a dazzling smile upon the man in the booth. His wife glared, first at Amanda, then at him. Amanda swept on by.

She slid onto the barstool next to the woman, whose auburn hair was a bit darker and much longer than her own, but whose green leather skirt was equally as short, and whose heels were equally as high. She had a good tan, too. Apparently, the dowdy look was over. "How was Hong Kong?" Amanda asked.

"Crowded," Cassandra answered, but said nothing more, for the bartender was standing right in front of them, smiling. "Ari, this is Amanda, from Paris," Cassandra introduced them, and Ari's smile grew wider still.

Amanda smiled back at the charming boy, appreciating the well-muscled body under the tight blue shirt and snug white trousers. He had just the perfect amount of curl to his thick, black hair. A pity she and Cassandra were staying in Athens for only two days. "Martini, please," Amanda told him. Cassandra already had her drink, something with orange juice and a cherry. Ari nodded and went to comply. "Well?" Amanda asked, turning to Cassandra. "Did you find anything of interest in Hong Kong?"

"Hong Kong is always interesting," Cassandra answered. "And sometimes," she added, retrieving a pack of cigarettes from her purse and laying it on the bar, "it's worthwhile."

"You got it," Amanda breathed in excitement and relief. "Chuan Li…?"

"…is a most accommodating gentleman," Cassandra finished.

Amanda sniffed as she reached for the pack, because Chuan Li had never been accommodating for her, or indeed for most women. But then, most women didn't have the Voice of Command. "You know, you could be really good at this," Amanda said, speculating on the possibilities as she picked up the pack, which was heavier than any pack of cigarettes ought to be.

The witch smiled. "I am really good at this."

Amanda drew in a breath to reply, but Ari returned with her drink then noticed what she held in her hand. "Would you care for a light?" Ari offered, his English heavily accented with his native Greek. He started to reach for a cigarette lighter that lay near a pile of paper napkins.

"No, thank you," Amanda answered as she tucked the "cigarette pack" into her purse, but holding his eyes with her own. "Not for cigarettes." He blushed then started to speak, only to be called to the end of the bar by the overweight American. Amanda sighed and leaned her chin on her hand. "A sweet boy," she observed, watching Ari from afar.

"Mmmm," her companion whole-heartedly agreed. "However, before you make plans, perhaps you should know that Claude and Thierry have asked us to join them for dinner tonight." She nodded at the American, who was irritatedly tapping his fingers on the bar. "Their business associate will be dining with his wife."

"Claude and Thierry?" Amanda repeated, turning slightly on her stool for a better view of the two debonair Frenchmen. They were already watching her. "A nice-looking pair," she said, turning back to the bar.

"They're brothers," Cassandra explained. "Their father was Pierre Malin. He died last year."

"Of Malin house of fashion?" Amanda asked. "And Malin perfumeries?"

Cassandra nodded. "And Malin jewelry design."

Amanda's eyebrows went up, and then so did the corners of her mouth. Ari saw it and smiled at her, but Amanda had other things on her mind now. She was a businesswoman, after all, and she did have bills to pay. Pity. He was such a sweet boy. Perhaps tomorrow…

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20 October 2006
Ephesus, Turkey
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"So, why don't you?" Amanda asked Cassandra three days later in Ephesus as the two women walked between the empty marble plinths that lined the ancient road on either side. "Steal?"

"Why do you?" Cassandra countered, adjusting her broad-brimmed hat and stepping over a puddle. It had rained last night, but the morning sky was deep blue, and the weathered paving stones were warm underfoot.

Amanda settled her sunglasses more firmly on the bridge of her nose and squinted against the glare of the sun off broken columns. "Oh, well." She shrugged. "Money."

"And …," Cassandra prompted knowingly.

Amanda did two things exceedingly well—sex and stealing—and sometimes she did them for the same reasons: money, yes, and the satisfaction of being the best, but equally important … "It's fun!" Ari had indeed proven to be a lovely young man.

"Exactly," Cassandra said. "There's no thrill to it when you can just order people around."

"Sometimes there is," Amanda said archly.

Cassandra actually laughed. "Indeed there is."

Oh, now this was interesting. Maybe the Ice Queen wasn't quite so cold as she appeared, even if she had gone back to screamingly boring clothes: a loose cotton shirt of blue and baggy shorts of beige. At least she wasn't wearing sneakers. Amanda smoothed a tiny wrinkle from the very short skirt of her own green dress, then wiggled the toes of her left foot to shake a pebble loose from her sandal. "And …?" she prompted Cassandra.

Cassandra flashed her a hungry smile, teeth white against red lips and delicately probing tongue. "I'm really good at that."

Now that went beyond interesting and straight to unnerving. With the Voice, you could make a man do absolutely anything in bed. Amanda stopped walking. Hmm …

Cassandra had stopped, too. She was standing in front of the remains of a waist-high wall, turning her head slowly from side to side. "Somewhere over there," she said, pointing down the hill and past the ruins of the baths, "in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, there was a brothel called the House of the Pomegranate. One taste, one bite"—and there was that ferociously salacious smile again, under that ridiculously floppy hat—"and a man simply had to return."

"And you worked in it."

"At first." Cassandra picked up a fragment of stone from between her feet and turned it this way and that. "Eventually, I bought the brothel with my earnings and ran it myself." She set the fragment down and dusted off her hands. "Good business, too. I bought one girl …" Cassandra half-smiled as she shook her head. "Oh, she had them panting. We called her Eurydice."

"After Orpheus's wife?"

Cassandra nodded. "Men would do anything for her, even walk into hell."

"And your name?"

The smile slipped away. "They called me Circe." Cassandra started walking again, quickly this time.

Circe, the sorceress who turned men into animals with a wave of her magic wand. "Of course," Amanda murmured and caught up to Cassandra. They joined the other tourists walking down the steep hill to the Celsus library, where wide stairs led to the reconstructed two-story marble façade. The great doors now led only to the empty space behind.

A group of Japanese posed for a photograph on the yellowed stone steps. A girl of about five in a pink shirt and blue trousers pointed to the statues in the niches between the doors. "Who are those ladies, Mama?" she asked in German.

"The patronesses of Wisdom, Character, Judgement, and Skill," her mother read from a brochure. "This was a library, a place for people to learn. The old statues are in a museum now. Those are copies."

"Why?"

"So they don't get rained on anymore. The stone was starting to melt."

"Why?" the girl asked again, and the mother started explaining acid rain.

Amanda and Cassandra moved to the welcome shade of a nearby arched gateway. Cassandra took off her hat and fanned herself. Amanda leaned against the cool stone wall and spoke quietly because of the tourists wandering by. "Rebecca told me she'd heard rumors that the Voice was taught in the temples of Artemis, but she never saw anyone use it, and she wasn't sure it was real."

Cassandra nodded. "We kept it secret, and there were never very many of us who knew it. When I joined, we had a small outpost here in Ephesus, though the town—village, really— was called Apasus then. The Sisterhood began on Crete about four thousand years ago, then moved its main temple to Lesbos and continued to spread from there. We had a network that reached from Ireland to Anatolia, from beyond the Rhine to the upper reaches of the Nile."

We, thought Amanda in some bemusement. We.

"But by the time Rebecca and I were five hundred or so," Cassandra said, "all the temple-schools of the sisterhood had been destroyed. The temples were built and rebuilt, of course, and we started schools here and there throughout the centuries. I started a dozen or so myself, in Potidaea, in Alexandria, near Masallia in Gaul, one in Britain just before the Romans left, then one in Ireland, and another in Spain when Ferdinand and Isabella were on the throne."

"Any since then?" Amanda asked.

"No." Cassandra put her hat back on, and she and Amanda went through the gateway and past a Latin inscription that read: "Whoever urinates here will be punished." Amanda smiled to herself; some things never changed. They paused at the edge of the agora, a large square surrounded on three sides by the remains of columned porticos, with many doorways that had once led to stores—the original shopping mall.

"But we never recovered our strength after that first wave of destruction," Cassandra continued, heading for the gate ahead of them that led to the theater. "The schools were isolated, the sisters few. Wars came, empires rose and fell, and the world changed. So many were killed." They went past three more empty doorways. "So much was lost."

Amanda fingered the crystal which hung from the chain around her neck, hidden beneath her dress. There are things older than Immortals, Rebecca had said when she'd given Amanda the crystal, all those years ago. Older and greater—and maddeningly unknown. "Did you ever hear stories or tales about things of power?" Amanda asked.

Cassandra turned to look at her, and Amanda let go of the crystal, camouflaging the movement as an adjustment of her purse strap. "You mean like the Holy Grail?" Cassandra asked, smiling. "A magic sword, a spear of light. A magic gauntlet with a sword, a shield to paralyze your enemies, silver sandals to help you fly. Oh yes, many stories. Some of them may well be true, but we of the Sisterhood didn't use things."

So much for that idea, Amanda thought in annoyance. That was the main reason she'd agreed to this trip, and then the witch didn't even know. Well, maybe she could get something else. "So, what did you use?" Amanda inquired when they reached the great semi-circle of the theater, its rows of tiered seats climbing the hill.

"Plants for dyes and medicines, of course," Cassandra said as she and Amanda started up the steps. "We studied astronomy, brewing, healing, weaving, all the useful arts. But for the magic, we used our visions and our dreams, and we raised our voices in song."

"Song," Amanda repeated in flat disbelief. "But that's just sound."

"And a laser beam is just light," Cassandra retorted. "Focus it, concentrate it, and there is energy to bend to your will." She slowed in her climb, and her voice slowed, too. "When we sang together, all the Sisterhood gathered, waves drumming on the beach, sunshine humming in the air, the flame of the sacred fires dancing in time … Oh, and we could make the very Earth come alive, and she would listen to our prayer …"

They had stopped, the both of them, Cassandra staring unseeing down the valley of the silted river, Amanda staring at her. Sunshine hummed in the air, and the stones about them whispered of ancient times.

A boy at the top of the hill shouted a cheerful greeting to his friend at the base, and Cassandra blinked and came aware. "Well," she said with finality, climbing again. "That's all gone now."

"All except for you," Amanda pointed out, pushing for more.

Cassandra shrugged. "I survived."

"To teach Roland."

That got her. Cassandra froze, rigid as those stone statues on the library wall. But she only commented mildly, "Students … can be disappointing."

Amanda knew that already, from both sides. "Oh, Amanda," Rebecca had often said, with a sorrowful shake of her head, and "Oh, Kenneth," Amanda had whispered, after she'd realized what he'd become.

"And sometimes," Cassandra continued, "we disappoint them."

Amanda knew that, too. This time she was the one to start moving, and Cassandra the one to catch up. "Did you teach anyone else the Voice?" Amanda asked, after they reached the top of the hill and began following the circle to the center aisle.

"Not after him."

"Could you teach me?"

Cassandra shot her a sharp look from underneath the hat. "Do you need it?"

"Well," Amanda drawled with an enticing smile, "it could be useful."

"Oh, it is," she agreed lightly. "But if people know you have it, they will never really trust you, and they're likely to decide they'd be safer with you dead. So you hide what you are, and what you can do. You lie, all the time."

She stopped walking and turned to watch the little figures of people far below. Amanda turned, too. Bright spots of color blazed here and there among the more sedate brown and blue. The girl with the pink shirt was hopping from bench to bench. Her mother sat nearby.

"It makes for a lonely life," Cassandra said.

Amanda was used to all of that.

"The Voice is also—addicting."

So was stealing. Amanda didn't steal only for the money or the satisfaction or the fun. Being a thief wasn't just what she did; it was what she was.

Cassandra seated herself upon a stone bench, still looking straight ahead. Amanda sat down nearby and stretched her legs, propping her feet up on the stone of the next row down. "The Voice is so tempting, so seductive," Cassandra explained. "Just a little bit, you think, just this once, just for now. And the occasional suggestion to a stranger, the persuasion to get an answer to a question, you can use it that way, from time to time.

"But to use the Voice more than that, to go deeper …" She shook her head and sighed. "There was a man I liked, long ago, and I wanted him to like me. It seemed simple enough—a few words here and there, a suggestion, an encouragement. But when he told me he cared for me, I looked into his eyes and realized I didn't know if he truly felt that way or not." She sighed again, almost soundless, a whimper of regret. "And neither did he. I had destroyed the very thing I wanted."

Nick, Amanda thought with piercing sorrow, silently whispering a name she hadn't had reason to say in over five years, and would never have a chance to say again. Oh, Nick.

Cassandra shrugged and crossed her arms, her hands placed just above the elbows, a defensive pose, a huddling of pain. "Using the Voice is like squeezing water. What you try to hold onto slips through your fingers, and you are left with nothing."

Amanda pounced. "What have you done with it, that scares you so much?"

Cassandra turned with startled eyes, then gave a rueful laugh. "You are so much like Rebecca."

"Me?" Amanda asked, startled in her turn. "Oh, no. She was brave, generous … honest. She was wonderful."

"You see straight into the heart," Cassandra said, "and so did she. You are very like her: brave, generous, honest—about yourself, even if not about things—a good person. You are wonderful, too." Amanda blinked in surprise, but Cassandra wasn't finished yet. "Duncan and Methos both love you, and they are not stupid men."

"No, they aren't," Amanda murmured, holding that close, the thought making her heart glad. And Methos and Duncan were why she trusted Cassandra, even with the Voice, wasn't it? Both of them—and Connor, too—knew about Cassandra's power, and not one of them seemed to consider her a threat.

But Amanda wasn't satisfied yet. "What about the Voice scares you, Cassandra?" she repeated.

"What about it scares you?"

"Being controlled, being powerless."

Cassandra nodded. "It's the same for me, only inside out. No one controls me, but I'm afraid I won't be able to control myself. It's overwhelming power, instead of none at all. The Voice destroys when it controls, and when I used it that way, I destroyed myself as well. You see … not all the men returned to the House of the Pomegranate, because some of them never left." Cassandra was staring at her splayed fingers, apparently inspecting her long, polished nails. "They put themselves in my hands, and I crushed them between pleasure and pain." She turned her hands over partway, her palms cupped as if she were holding an invisible sphere. "I became death."

Make that cradling a skull. Amanda grimaced in distaste. She liked a little variety in bed herself, but she'd never gone that far. "So, what happened?"

The hands relaxed, the voice lightened. "Oh, I got careless, arrogant. Greedy." Cassandra slid Amanda a sideways glance as she shared that common fault. "As I said, it's an addiction. People noticed. They dragged me out and stoned me to death, then threw me in the river. I needed that," she concluded briskly. "I couldn't have stopped myself."

"Couldn't you?" she challenged.

"I didn't want to," Cassandra replied tartly. "I liked it. And I know a part of me still does."

And this was downright terrifying. Talk about being a black widow. "Why are you telling me all this?" Amanda asked her.

Cassandra turned on the bench to face her fully, eye to eye. "Because I want you to believe me when I tell you that I never want to be that … person … again, and so I swore an oath to use the Voice only when there is great danger or great need. And unless you try for my head, I swear that I will never use the Voice on you."

Amanda licked her lips slowly, considering. "Do the MacLeods know about the brothel?"

Cassandra shook her head decisively. "No. I shared other stories to convince them. Methos would probably understand, but I haven't told him, either."

"Do you have a lot of stories like that?"

"Yes," she said bleakly. "But that's the worst of them."

Which meant the worst of Cassandra, too. If, that is, she were telling the truth about her past. If not … well, what of it? Rebecca had had skeletons in her closet, and so did Methos and Duncan, and Amanda did, too. But Cassandra wasn't after her head now, Amanda felt sure, and that was what mattered today.

That and one or two other little things. "So, what's between you and Connor?" Amanda asked curiously. "Besides his wife?"

That got her a cold glare and the firm statement: "Alex is my best friend."

"Mm-hmm," Amanda murmured. "But you're obviously planning ahead."

Cassandra tried for another glare then gave it up for a helpless shrug. "We're Immortal," she said. "How can we not?"

That was true enough, and Cassandra wasn't the only one waiting. "So, you and Connor …?" Amanda asked again.

"Are friends," Cassandra answered, firmly again, then turned it around. "So, you and Methos …?"

"Are friends. And you and Methos?" Amanda asked, because she needed to know, and in New Zealand Methos had flatly refused to discuss the witch, no matter what Amanda had tried.

Cassandra's mouth twisted in a wry grin. "Methos and I are non-combatants. After Duncan's wedding, we agreed on a truce, with a clearly defined neutral zone. He stays away from me; I stay away from him."

Amanda was wondering just how long that little arrangement would last, when Cassandra asked, "And you and I, Amanda?"

"You and I …" Amanda curved her lips into a delightfully wicked smile, remembering the scene from the musical Evita, when Eva Duarte and Colonel Peron had first met. "You and I could be surprisingly good for each other."

Cassandra smiled back in just the same way. "Yes, we could."

"As long as we understand each other," Amanda warned.

"Absolutely. And trust each other."

"Of course." But only so far. She leaned back on her elbows and considered the older woman. "So, you didn't use the Voice on Chuan Li?"

Cassandra stretched out her legs. "Actually, I did."

"And what was all that lovely story you just told me about never using the Voice unless there was 'great danger' or 'great need'?"

"You had need."

Amanda blinked, unused to having people do things for her with such amazing generosity.

"And I have need of you," Cassandra added.

Ah, now that was much more believable. "To do what?"

"A few small things, here and there, now and then."

"Why don't you just take care of them with the Voice?"

"The Voice isn't appropriate for every situation, nor is it safe for me. 'A woman's got to know her limitations,'" Cassandra said, misquoting Clint Eastwood. She added grimly, "I learned mine."

Amanda decided she'd rather not take the chance of finding her own. She didn't really need the Voice, anyway. There were other ways to convince people, and she was good at them all.

"For a long time, I didn't use any of my powers," Cassandra said. "They frightened me. I frightened myself. I didn't feel as if I had control." She turned to Amanda and blinked once, slowly, like a cat lazing in the sun. "Now I do."

Amanda studied that long, limber form, and wondered again if she should trust the witch. Duncan and Methos both did. Connor had practically made her a member of his family. But they were all men, and what did men know about women? On the other hand, Rebecca had spoken of Cassandra with respect, and Elena did, too. Alex MacLeod and Rachel Ellenstein both liked Cassandra; Amanda had seen that at Duncan's wedding. And Connor's daughter, who was one sharp little cookie, liked her "Aunt Cass" a lot.

Oh, why not? Amanda decided suddenly. Cassandra was potentially deadly, but then what Immortal wasn't? Amanda would be careful, naturally; she always was, but she could use an accomplice from time to time, and Cassandra had proven herself willing and more than able. This could be a very profitable relationship, for both of them. For more than just money, Amanda decided charitably. Cassandra was a bit of stick, and she definitely needed to lighten up, do something outrageous, and (Amanda tried not to wince as she looked over that outfit) go shopping. Amanda stretched luxuriously, already making plans. The rest of the trip could be great fun.

When she looked at the stage area far below, the pink-shirted girl was gone. "Ready to walk to the Artemision?" Amanda suggested, and she and Cassandra started down.

The walk to the ruined temple was dusty, long, and hot. Amanda took the bottle of water from her purse and drank. Cassandra did the same with hers. "It's hard to believe this was one of the seven wonders of the world," Amanda commented when they finally reached the ruins. Tumbled blocks of marble lay half-hidden in the grass, sketching outlines of walls. A single crooked column still stood, but it held up nothing. A bird had made her nest on the top stone. A medieval-looking fortress with crenelated walls crowned the adjacent hill, and low modern buildings stood nearby. "Were you here when the Goths burned it?" she asked Cassandra.

"No, I'd been gone for a century or more. I was in … Athens, I think. Or had I already left for Hispania?" Cassandra shrugged one shoulder. "It's been a while."

"Rebecca told me she'd always remember hearing about the burning of the earlier temple, when Alexander the Great was born. She'd just arrived in Jerusalem for the Holy Days, and everyone was talking about it." The wind blew hot and dry around them, and Amanda drank again.

"Did she convert to Judaism?" Cassandra asked.

"Yes. During the Ionian revolt, King Darius destroyed the city of Miletus and enslaved all its inhabitants, but a Jewish family in a nearby town helped her hide from the soldiers."

Or, at least, they'd tried. "I knew I shouldn't stay," Rebecca had confided on a winter evening in an abbey now destroyed, on a winter evening when Amanda had idly asked Rebecca about her name. "But Maryam insisted, and my companion Aristicho had been wounded. He needed attention, hot food, rest. Just for the night, I thought. We'll move on in the morning. But the soldiers came before dawn." Her embroidery had lain forgotten in her hands, and tears had meandered down her cheeks. "They came for me and Aristicho, but they killed us all. Even the children, from eleven-year-old Benjamin, down to the two-week-old baby, a little girl named Rebecca. When I revived, she was the first one I saw." Amanda had blinked away tears of her own, the stinging sorrow hot and unfamiliar in her eyes. She hadn't cried in years, not for anyone, not even for herself. "That was when I chose my name and my religion," Rebecca had continued, "and I will keep them—forever."

But Amanda wasn't going to tell Cassandra about any of that. "When I met Rebecca in Normandy," Amanda said, "she would light the candles before dinner every Sabbath, and she told me the most wonderful stories, about Esther and David and the Rebecca who married Isaac. A few centuries later, when the French started persecuting the Jews, she started going to mass, just like everybody else." Amanda wrinkled her nose. "She made me go, too, whenever I visited her. She said Immortals were already different enough, and we had to blend, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect all of those who knew us. But she soon left Europe for the Moslem countries, where she didn't have to pretend."

Cassandra was looking at her closely. "You weren't raised a Christian," she stated.

"I wasn't raised at all," Amanda retorted and walked away to the only tree among the ruins, its branches spreading wide, but there were flickers of other candles in her memories, glimpses of another woman, dark-haired and laughing, a bearded man with strong arms, gifts of food set under an oak tree, the scent of baking bread, laughter and love. Then … nothing.

Amanda blinked fiercely and shut those memories away. She'd been on the streets—mud paths, back then—since she was five. She knew how to take care of herself just fine, then and now.

Cassandra's footsteps came nearer, swishing through the grass, and Amanda turned with a bright smile. "It's so quiet," she said, waving a hand at the tumbled walls. "So deserted. I'd love to see what it was like, long ago."

"Would you?" Cassandra murmured, and when Amanda nodded, the wind suddenly shifted, and the ancient stones no longer whispered. They sang.

Other voices were singing, too, thousands of them, from the deep tones of men to the shrill piping of children, as the people made their way along that long and dusty road. Great drums pounded, a booming insistent beat, with a faster, syncopated rhythm from smaller drums superimposed. Women danced past in bright scarves and fringed skirts, long hair whipping over their faces, eyes laughing, bells tinkling on fingers and toes. Men in turbans and bright gold jewelry laughed and called out encouragement and lewd suggestions; the women called back equally lewd propositions of their own. The people murmured in a babble of different tongues, and hair color ranged from bright yellow to flaming red to all the shades of brown. Black-skinned Nubians stood beside pale-skinned Gauls. Roman soldiers walked in pairs among the crowd, scarlet capes flashing, but no one seemed to care. Young children sat in the branches of the many trees that lined the processional and waved long ribbons of green and white. The scents of roasted meat and incense came from the temple, bright-white and many-columned, enormous, majestic and serene.

The wind shifted again and the temple blurred, then realigned itself on a slightly smaller scale. Bronze statues lined the temple steps, and the Roman soldiers were gone. The crowd was smaller; the languages took on mostly Greek cadences and tones. The children's ribbons were scarlet, but they still sat in the branches of trees, and still the drums pounded loud. The women and the men danced side by side.

Then the temple wavered and split into two, one to the west and one to the east, and the sky went black save for the silver coin of the moon. "Kybele!" the people shouted. "Kybele!" And still the drumming went on, only the deep tones now, slower, steady …

… an irresistible heartbeat, a summoning to yet another temple, much smaller than the others, flat-roofed, its base dark green instead of gleaming white. The night was gone. Bound captives knelt in the grass before the temple. A snake-dance of women swirled by in white robes with red ribbons fluttering in their hands. Men watched in rapt silence, swaying with the beat of the drums. The black-haired priestess welcoming them at the top of the temple steps stood with her arms upraised, and she wore nothing at all.

"Rebecca!" Amanda called to a woman in the parade, but the woman danced on by, her long golden hair gleaming red in the light of the rising sun, the ribbons twining about her body as she twirled. "Rebecca!" Amanda called again, because she knew it was her, but Rebecca was beyond her, ascending the temple steps, and then, suddenly, that temple was gone …

… into yet another temple. A piglet squealed as men laid it on the altar, and knife of the black-robed priestess came flashing down. Blood spurted, into the air and onto the ground, and the people shouted above the drumming, a wordless cry that curled into …

… an eerie keening, swallowed by the grove of trees which stood dark and majestic, their branches a living roof over an altar built of stones. A bound man was laid upon the altar, and again the knife came flashing down. A young woman knelt beneath the sacrifice, catching the blood in a basin of gold. Children beat the drums, and men shouted …

… men and women stood silent, watching, as drums beat softly and the ceremony among the trees happened once more, but now the man was unbound. Young and handsome, naked and erect, he strode forward and lay down—not upon a cold slab of stone—but upon the living body of a woman, who welcomed him with upraised arms. The crowd swayed in rhythm with the couple entwined on the forest floor, panting, gasping, the women erupting in short sharp cries, the men in deeper groans. The drumming pulsed, quickened, thundered … died. Then came a moment of panting silence, until the man stood, waiting. An aged priestess in white stepped forward with the sacred knife in her upraised hand. Amanda cried out in horror and protest, but the sound was swallowed in the triumphant roar of the crowd, and the man's arcing blood painted scarlet ribbons all around. The pale body of the naked woman lay still upon her bed of dark leaves, as his drained body crumpled by her side. The white-robed priestess stroked the bodies—alive and dead—with a branch, painting green leaves with red, an autumn come too soon. She turned and flicked the branch toward the watching crowd. Scarlet droplets spattered, warm and sticky, and Amanda lifted her hand to wipe her cheek …

… and saw Cassandra doing the same. They stood among broken ruins in bright sunshine, near a single column of crooked stone. A jet flew high overhead, and a young man in a white tank top and baggy purple trousers boogied by, dancing to the beat of drums only he could hear, his headphones putting him in another world.

Cassandra's hand slid from her cheek to her lips, and her fingers lingered there, as if she were tasting ancient blood. Then she dropped her hand and said with half a smile, "Whoever said church was dull?"

"How did you do that?" Amanda asked, still trying to make sense of the images, the sounds.

"I'm a witch," Cassandra replied matter-of-factly, as if she were saying she was an accountant or a real estate agent. "I see the future; I listen to the past."

When a sacrifice required blood. Amanda shuddered delicately, glad to be in the here and now. "How far back did we see?"

"I'm not sure. Strabon said seven temples were built on this site, and archeologists have found evidence people lived here at least five thousand years ago, probably more."

Surfing history instead of surfing the web. Hmm. "Could you teach me?"

"To see the future?" Cassandra shook her head. "That's not a skill; it's a gift. Listening to the past?" She considered Amanda carefully and then smiled. "We can try."

Amanda hummed happily as they walked among the ruins, remembering the magnificent jewelry some of the ancient Ephesians had worn. In her new job as a consultant for the Malin brothers, this little skill should be very useful, indeed.

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25 October 2006
Jerusalem, Israel
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Cassandra pulled on the loose trousers of gold silk, gave a final tug to the hem of the embroidered tunic, then came out of the dressing room and executed a slow fashion model's twirl for Amanda, who clapped her hands in delight. "I just knew that brocade would be stunning on you!" Amanda exclaimed. "You should wear gold and bright colors more often, instead of always green or black. And the lines … yes, very elegant. You look like a queen. Now for the jewelry." She stepped back to examine, head tilted and eyes narrowed in thought. "Gold, of course, with rubies … or maybe jade, to match the embroidery. And shoes. You definitely need shoes." She turned to the shopkeeper, and he bowed agreeably and led her to the far side of the boutique.

Cassandra examined herself in the tri-fold mirror. Amanda had an excellent eye. The trousers flowed with Cassandra as she moved, like harem pants of old. The tunic was tailored to emphasis all her curves: padded shoulders, full breasts, narrow waist, and a slight flaring over the hips that gave the appearance of a short skirt. The purple satin was almost hidden beneath the gold, crimson, and emerald flowers that covered her from neck to thigh—a Byzantine opulence that Cassandra hadn't dared in centuries. Something else she hadn't dared …

When Amanda and the shopkeeper returned (Amanda carrying the jewelry and the shopkeeper holding the gold-strapped sandals), Amanda stopped and said, "Oh, my," in admiration and amusement. The shopkeeper stood there blinking. "Nice legs," Amanda said, and Cassandra smiled back and took another look in the mirror. She had taken off the trousers, and now wore only black nylons and the tunic, which did indeed make a short skirt. Very short. "I guess that's legal," Amanda said, "but, then—"

"Who cares?" Cassandra said, at the exact same time as Amanda, and they smiled again, Amanda with approval, Cassandra with a delightful sense of coming home. "Girlfriends are important," Cassandra had said to young Sara a month ago at Duncan's wedding, and it was true. Over the centuries, Cassandra had missed that most of all: the comfortable companionship of other women, the confidences and the laughter, the late-night chats about children and men, the knowledge that even your bitchiness would be understood—and sometimes shared—by your friends. Amanda was a treasure, in many ways.

Not that Alex hadn't been a wonderful friend to Cassandra these last ten years, but she was a mortal, and there were things she and Cassandra simply could not share. Elena, though Immortal, was only four hundred years old, and she still had growing up to do. Amanda, with twelve centuries, was less of a little sister. Even so …

Cassandra knew very well she was searching not just for sisters, but for older sisters, a wise counselor, a Lady of the Temple … a mother. She also knew she wasn't likely to find one. "Rebecca was the oldest female Immortal, as far as I know," Amanda had said at dinner a few nights before. "Duncan told me he'd met an Egyptian woman who was about the same age, but she lost her head over ten years ago." Amanda had lifted her glass in an ironic toast to Cassandra. "Looks like you're the oldest now, you and Methos."

"What a pair," Cassandra had murmured, wishing once again that Rebecca were still alive.

But she wasn't. That was the way of the Game, no point in thinking about it. Move on. Rebecca's student was still alive, and Cassandra was thoroughly enjoying this tour with Amanda, as she had enjoyed her cruise with Elena. Cassandra had desperately needed some youthful exuberance to break her free of her cautious and stodgy ways, and Amanda and Elena both excelled at doing that. They both knew how to offer mothering, too. Cassandra knew she was lucky to have met them, and luckier still to be able to think of them as friends. They would also be valuable allies, and Cassandra was going to need all the help she could get in the years to come.

"Try these earrings," Amanda said, holding out a pair of pendants made of emerald and gold. "They're paste, but they'll do for now." Cassandra clipped them on, twisted her hair up on top of her head, then turned to Amanda for approval. "Perfect," Amanda declared.

"Now," Cassandra said, "I'm going to find something for you."

This story is continued Chapter 4: Glory Days, wherein Alex MacLeod and Cassandra set off on a dangerous course